Much has been said about Shanxi’s ancient walled city of Pingyao, home of China’s earliest bank, the Rishengchang. The bank was founded on the premises of a dye shop in 1823 to serve the province’s Jinshang (Shanxi merchants).

Jin was the name of the state that flourished in the area nearly three millennia ago during the Zhou dynasty. It remains the short name for Shanxi.

Before Rishengchang, transactions were paid for in silver, coins or other valuables which had to be escorted by armed guards. This time-honoured practice ended when the bank began taking silver deposits and replacing currency with bank drafts, a move which consigned the armed "security services" to martial arts novels, TV serials and movies that immortalize the now extinct trade.

The draft bank’s success owed much to the then-revolutionary business practice of separating ownership and management, which led to greater professionalism and a strict emphasis on integrity, supported by a system of rewards and penalties.

Looking at the modest premises of Rishengchang today in Pingyao, one could never guess the scope of its business. At its peak, the bank had deposits totalling 20 million liang (tael) of silver and handled remittances amounting to 38 million liang. With branches in key cities and trade centres, it flourished for 108 years until it ceased draft banking in 1932 to focus on savings and loans. It eventually collapsed in the face of competition from western-style banks.

A plaque at the establishment’s courtyard says there were a total of 22 such draft banks in Pingyao, making the city the undisputed financial centre of China during the last century of the Qing dynasty.

Pingyao is a living museum of Ming and Qing dynasty architecture, and like the province’s Yungang grottoes near Datong, is a Unesco World Heritage site.

Our group arrived in the early evening. Given the walled city’s historic importance, it came as a surprise that the portion of highway near Pingyao was dark and in poor condition.

Peasants with cartloads of hay and produce paid scant attention to safety as we bumped and jolted along for what seemed like ages until we arrived at the city’s famed battlements. From there we transferred to open buggies, winding our way around the massive Ming dynasty walls to our hotel on a street of refurbished two-storey linked courtyard residences near the Chenghuangmiao (Temple of the City God).

The rooms around the courtyard have been converted into guestrooms of different sizes with custom furnishings and modern attached bathrooms.

Some of the accommodations looked cosy, but I passed an uncomfortable night in a tiny bare room lit by a single fluorescent tube. Like the other rooms, a traditional woven bamboo mat hung outside the door provided additional privacy.

Attached to a closet-like bathroom, my "cell" might have been the watchman’s or maid’s quarters. The room had two narrow brick kang beds and a small wooden table with a TV. Lined with a thin cotton quilt, the kang had been decommissioned and was no longer heated from underneath like an oven.

The old architecture and lanes within Pingyao’s city walls have been preserved, and some areas were cordoned off for on-going restoration work. The city folk are seemingly used to strangers poking around their homes. When I meandered into a residential quarter, a friendly woman welcomed me into her courtyard and proudly pointed out her neighbour’s house where the windows had been beautifully refurbished.

In the streets and shops around Rishengchang, craftsmen continue to ply their trade for the benefit of tourists, most of whom are from other Chinese provinces. Shanxi has a rich tradition of crafts, including hand-made cloth shoes, wooden combs and colourful shoe linings hand-embroidered with motifs such as fish, frogs and flowers.

The Jinshang played such an important role in the province’s commercial history that a whole section of the new Shanxi Museum in Taiyuan is devoted to them. In one of the galleries, there is an sample of a Rishengchang deposit book and bank licences from the Qing dynasty.

Reconstruction of several of the Pingyao banks show that for all their wealth, the bankers operated in rather sparse surroundings.

The museum also has a section on a Jinshang favourite — Shanxi’s vernacular Jin opera. Acts from two different operas are projected onto a black screen the size of a large television, providing visitors a mesmerizing glimpse of this exotic art form.

Pingyao and the surrounding counties were the heartland of the Jinshang clans whose intrepid, enterprising members were quick to spot new opportunities and boldly ventured wherever there were business prospects.